198 The Great World's Farm | 



butterflies, and the richest part of South America is the 

 region of the Amazons; where, also, the broad belt of 

 forest which surrounds the land-surface of the earth 

 almost continuously at the equator is denser than any- 

 where else, and swarms with insects of many kinds. 



There are some twelve hundred species of butterflies in 

 this region; but these gay insects do not care for the 

 solemn depths of the forest, where they find little or no 

 entertainment, and they are chiefly to be seen in the more 

 or less open paths, where there is more light, and where, 

 consequently, more flowers are to be found. 



Here large blue butterflies, and many others, fly along 

 for miles, and always return if driven into the forest. For 

 this is gloomy and even musty, like a cavern; the damp 

 ground is not covered by herbage, there is little beauty or 

 brilliancy of coloring in the trees, and flowers are rare. 



The fact is that, according to the German proverb, 

 "one cannot see the forest for the trees." They are so 

 crowded together, and they run up to such a height, that 

 there is little to be seen but trunks, canopied by a mass of 

 foliage so dark and dense that the sun is quite powerless 

 to penetrate it. 



Many trees never blossom until they are a hundred feet 

 high, and it is only when a shower of bright petals falls 

 from above that there is any sign of what is going on 

 overhead, or of the beauty, displayed to insects only, out- 

 side the dark canopy. Beneath it the world is dank, dull, 

 gloomy, unrelieved by a ray of light; but what a different 

 world it is above! Here the sun is in full blaze, and bees 

 in swarms are humming cheerily over the magnificent ban- 

 quet of flowers spread for them. 



Bees do not like gloom, or even the checkered shade 



